| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: evening, or winter, it was all the same to her, and she always --
invariably -- longed for one thing only, to get to the end of her
journey as quickly as could be.
She felt as though she had been living in that part of the
country for ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to
her that she knew every stone, every tree on the road from the
town to her school. Her past was here, her present was here, and
she could imagine no other future than the school, the road to
the town and back again, and again the school and again the road.
. . .
She had got out of the habit of thinking of her past before she
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: reduced to one,--this is it: I cannot respect the man who,
knowingly, is smirched for a sum of money, whatever the amount may
be; five francs stolen at play or five times a hundred thousand
gained by a legal trick are equally dishonoring. I will tell you
all. I feel myself degraded by the very love which has hitherto
been all my joy. There rises in my soul a voice which my
tenderness cannot stifle. Ah! I have wept to feel that I have more
conscience than love. Were you to commit a crime I would hide you
in my bosom from human justice, but my devotion could go no
farther. Love, to a woman, means boundless confidence, united to a
need of reverencing, of esteeming, the being to whom she belongs.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: the bond of the family is to be loosed, there shall be no
bitterness of remorse in our farewells.
Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us, on
the long days in which we have been served, not according to our
deserts, but our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the
blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from which our feet
have been plucked out. For our sins forgiven or prevented, for our
shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, O God. Help us yet
again and ever. So order events, so strengthen our frailty, as
that day by day we shall come before Thee with this song of
gratitude, and in the end we be dismissed with honour. In their
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